May 4th, 2014
This weekend the Southbank hosted a Streets of Spain food and drink fiesta,
sponsored by Campo Viejo Rioja.
I was delighted to see that about 16 stalls had come from la Boqueria in Barcelona,
including one of my favourite stalls, Menuts Rosa.
The Gabaldà family have run Menuts Rosa for four generations – they have been selling offal in la Boqueria since 1900.
Back in Cataluña Rosa and Francisca sell fresh meat products like the above,
but they also do a line of traditional home made stews in vacuum packs, which can be heated up and served within 5 minutes or so. This is what they’d brought with them to promote in London.
Alongside the packets of food, they were selling bowls of hot
kidneys,
tripe and cap i pota (below).
I’d been hoping they’d have cap i pota – my favourite Catalan stew, typically made by cooking calf’s head and feet in lard, olive oil and sherry, with chilli pepper, red pepper and samfaina for several hours until tender. It’s a thick, meaty, unctuous dish that makes your lips stick together. I’ll have to make this myself the next time I’m in Barcelona.
The weather had turned cold and Menut Rosa’s hot food at £3.50 a bowl was perfect to warm people up – it was also cheaper than most of the other food on offer. I bought a bowl of cap i pota and chatted to Rosa and her mum about buying a veal penis (from their stall in Barcelona) and making a stew with instructions given to me by one of their South American employees (Veal Penis Stew recipe). Apparently animal penis is good for virility and is similarly popular in China – Chinese Stag Soup recipe.
I went home with some vacuum packed tongue and pistachios – i llengua amb festucs.
Before leaving I had a good look around the other traders in the market too, above is Canasaladeries J Farres who specialise in pork and cured meat
and came across an interesting chicken paella at Jamón Jamón (from Portobello Road), It looked like a traditional Valencian recipe with white beans and rosemary. I read somewhere that you use rosemary in the absence of snails, but never the two together, because snails are fed rosemary and are therefore pre flavoured.
I believe these beautiful prawns were going on top…
The Streets of Spain fiesta continues tomorrow (May 5th) from 12 – 8pm.
Yay – they had your favourite cap i pota….I’m so pleased! Looks like it was a great event. We’ve spent the day introducng the Spanish to a day by the English seaside drinking pints of bitter, eating prawns (also by the pint) and scallops nd dover sole for dinner tonight 🙂 Have a great weekend!
I know – how brilliant was that! I din’t expect them to bring cap i pota and I was very pleased to see a good demand for the tripe too. I hope your guests liked the bitter – I’m sure they’ll love the Dover sole 😉
What a wonderful event! I am quite jealous!
The day started out as a disaster – I went to get some money from a cash machine and realised I’d lost my bank card! I remembered where I’d used it last, 2 days before and miraculously the shop still had it. After that the day just had to be wonderful 🙂
Thanks for sharing the tasty food tour of the food stalls at the fiesta. I like the idea of the vacuum packed stew, ready to heat up in five minutes. The Spring air was so cool I craved Chili con Carne so went and got the ingredients and cooked it to warm up! Looks like you had a great time MD.
Thanks Ruth, when I looked back at that hot food I could have eaten it all – it was definitely a warm food day. I hope your chilli was good 😉
That is my kind of eating! Nice. Veal penis…interesting. I kind of want one of those vacuum packed stews. Yum!
Thanks Amanda – it’s all good hearty food. Apparently veal penis stew is good for virility… so they say 😉
Oh Mad – the vacuum packed tripe is just calling out to me and I can’t find my genie anywhere 😉 ! That tongue + pistachios you took home I would not mind pinching either!! But I do wonder how many visitors did pull a face seeing all the offal 😀 ? Must admit I am not sure whether I have eaten penis either . . . hmmm, poor critter!!!
Hi Eha – I was wondering myself, since offal is far more popular in Spain that England, but the food was very popular. People did seem interested in trying it and Menuts Rosa was quite busy 🙂
Your tastes in food sound just like my husband’s. He was just talking with our butcher about tongue and he loves tripe. 🙂 Your weather looks like ours…I don’t go anywhere without my jacket as it is still cold here.
Thanks Karen. We got very lucky with the weather – the next day it went up to 20º C 😉
This sounds like my kind of festival, MD. Just get me a seat near that the pot of tripe and go on about your business. I’ll be just fine. 🙂
Hi John – I wanted to sit by all three stew post for the rest of the day!
They also had some very good empanadas – I got one of their’s and one from an Argentinean stall for comparison. I had them for supper – both were excellent and I wished I’d bough more 😉
Well, if one must have a virility soup, better that than something from some endangered animal as they so often seem to be. 🙂 Looks like a great fiesta.
Thanks Michelle – it’s all nose to tail here 🙂
Love the snail & rosemary fact, very informative!
Thanks Andrea – it’s something I came across in The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten the same day!
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/oct/13/foodanddrink.features5
Looks great MD. Heading over to Barcelona in a couple of weeks – must admit I’m looking forward to it a little more now…
Thanks Phil! Do look through my Barcelona restaurant posts – the three course lunchtime menus are around 10€ including wine or beer, whereas nigh time is much more expensive. It’s a great excuse to go out for lunch everyday! Don’t eat or drink on the Ramblas, it’s all expensive and there are lots of much better and cheaper places just off it. Wine by the glass (or bottle) is cheaper than beer.
Also, see here for my friend Oli’s restaurant list:
http://olipix.com/extreme-lunching-barcelona/
I hope you have a great time 😉
Superb – cheers MD! I’ll no doubt report back…
Cool – my links are towards the top of this page, on the right, under Categories 😉